Placing Evidence

Placing evidence is one of the two actions a player can take when following up a lead. Placing evidence allows a player to put an evidence token on a suspect in order to help prove that suspect's guilt or innocence. Most evidence tokens bear a number ranging from 5 (particularly damning evidence) to -4 (particularly exonerating evidence). When the game ends, the suspect with the highest postive total of evidence is the murderer. (see "Determining the Murderer" on page 36).

To place evidence, a player who has just followed up a lead simply announces that he is doing so, and draws an evidence token from the pile of evidence tokens near the board.

He then looks at the evidence token in secret and decides which suspect he wants to place it on. By placing evidence on a suspect, the player hopes to eventually prove that suspect either guilty or innocent, as directed by his hunch cards.

An evidence token may be placed on any suspect in play that the player chooses. (Exception: Suspects who have been killed may not have evidence placed on them.) Each suspect sheet has three areas, each known as a file , which correspond to the three different types of leads. Each evidence token must be placed on the file type that corresponds to the lead that generated it. In other words, a player who follows up a physical lead (represented by a thumbprint) must place any evidence from that lead in some suspect's physical evidence file (which is marked with a thumbprint as well). A player cannot, for instance, follow up a testimony lead and place evidence in a suspect's document file.

An evidence token is normally placed facedown, but a player may choose to reveal it by placing it faceup. Once revealed, a piece of evidence always stays revealed unless

a card or other game effect says otherwise. Revealing evidence is usually a bad move, but it can be useful in bluffs, deals, and other strategies.

Tip: Players should be very cautious when placing evidence to avoid giving away what's on their hunch cards. If the other players figure out which suspect a player is trying to make guilty, they can arrange for that suspect to be killed using hits (see "Hits" on page 33), or simply gang up to ensure a different suspect winds up guilty instead.